Two Years Later

It has been two years now since I first experienced the symptoms that would later be diagnosed as a brain tumor.  And while I wouldn’t say that my life is markedly better now—indeed, sometimes it seems much worse—I met a lot of wonderful people during the process, made new friends, and reconnected with old ones.  If anyone asks, I know exactly which medications will help with nausea during chemotherapy, and I have been in the MRI machine so many times that I am now an old pro at having scans.  I may not be the sharpest tool in the shed, or the best-looking, or the wealthiest person you’ll ever meet, but I am skilled at one thing:  surviving.

Scanned

One month after I completed my radiation treatments, I went back for a follow-up MRI of my brain.  I am relieved to announce that the doctors found nothing of note—they think that my brain is looking fine, albeit different given the surgery and treatments I underwent.  The current plan is to continue with a scheduled chemotherapy regimen as well as intermittent scans to make sure I progress normally.  And based on the type of tumor that was removed from my brain, the scans will be used to make sure it doesn’t reoccur.

And yet despite my clean bill of health, I can feel myself slipping back into the depression I thought I had left behind me several months ago.  I feel trapped in a life that just won’t let me get ahead.  The book I started writing fizzled out after 36,000 words or so, well shy of my 60,000-plus word goal.  The editing and publication of two other completed novels seems a slow, laborious process that I can only hope will provide some reward to go with the risk.  My book sales have been decent if not spectacular—then again, they never were spectacular, but merely just enough to get by from month to month.